...welcome to May at WMS...

Welcome to Day 1 of the May Release samples - I'm kicking us off with a new set called Gingham & Co. If you're new here, we release new clear photopolymer stamps (that's the best ones) every other month. May is a release month and so we will be previewing our new goodies for the next couple of days while we count down to May 1st, when all of the new goodies will be available in our store! Be sure to check back with us for the eye candy if nothing else and stay tuned for the huge competition - there is a super prize, but you will be required to make something!!! :)

Before I tell you any more tho' - do please be sure to check in with our DT to see what the ladies have been up to!! I can't wait to see!

• Anya Schrier
• Belinda Chang Langner
• Bonnie Sharp
• Carly Robertson
• Claire Brennan
• Jennifer Holmes
• Julia Aston
• Kate Whelan
• Laurie Schmidlin
• Lynn Mercurio
• Mona Pendleton
• Niki Estes 
• Sandie Dunne
• Sarah Martina Parker
• Tosha Leyendekker
• 
  

For today's project, I made up 3 little cupcake boxes - the template will be released on May 1st along with the new stamps!! I love cupcakes, who doesn't? but any templates I have seen to date have had flat sided cuppies, since any cuppies I bake are usually round, I wanted a round template. So I made this one up! You like?? Such a versatile little template it's doing double duty here as a little flower pot!

Gingham & Co. is a set featuring three background building gingham stamps in three different scales. I absolutely adore gingham and I can see this set in so many different settings, right away I'm thinking Baby stuff, but Christmas of course and also spring things like today's project!!!

There is a 4th stamp in the set - the "& Co." - It's a reverse polka dot stamp which will be incredibly useful for creating areas of coloured polka patterns in any colour you choose - you can see that I have inked it up in green here to get a lovely green and white polka dot pattern on the right hand leaf. If you look closer you can see that I used the same stamp to create the pink and white polka pattern on the second petal of the flower.

I used all three scales of gingham on my little project, as I love mixing them, I think the variation in scale adds so much interest!

Right away I'm going to tell you that these are LARGE stamps!! We always make our backgrounders extra long so that you have no trouble stamping the full length of a standard size 4.25 x 5.5 inch card.

The three gingham stamps are for creating backgrounds and will line up perfectly - the reverse polka is a huge stamp that will enable you to cover approx one half of a 4.25 x 5.5 inch card front. I made the stamp large on purpose, mainly because the polka dot pattern is not one that would be easy to line up and a large stamp means that I don't really need to do that, but also I envisaged cutting/punching shapes from the reverse polka impressions, such as the leaves here.

I'll be back later with details on this project, but I have to say it is very simply made, the hardest bit is waiting for the card to dry (much sponging with distress inks! ) so that I could stick it together!

The Competition

Just before I go I want to tell you a little about the competition - Waltzingmouse Stamps is turning two on the 21st May! And I want you all to join me in celebrating with a little tea party!! Here's what I want you to do - since I'm bringing the buns (cupcakes!!! - that's what we call them over here) - you can bring the tea!

I want you to use either the Free Tea bag baggie template - downloadable here - or the Tea cup template if you already own it - a purchase is NOT required to play, if you don't have the tea cup, get the free tea bag baggie. If you have the Piece of Cake template you may use that also (you don't need to make a cake - a slice is perfect!).

Make either the tea cup/tea bag baggie or slice of cake and decorate/stamp them for a party! I will open a post for them here on my blog after the release and we'll have an inlinkz feature where you can link them up for everyone to see.

You will have until 21st May to link your entries and we will only be accepting ONE entry per person! So give it your everything!!

The Prize
One random winner, to be chosen on the 21st May, will win £200 worth of WMS goodies (that's about $333USD, $316 CAD $305AUD). The winner may pick their choice from all the stamp sets/die templates/papers available at the store and will also have the option of picking from future releases!! So if you already have a good WMS collection, the next few releases could be yours for free!!

Anyone tickled?